The Damn Disciples (17 page)

And through the cold night, as he wondered if he were going to live or die—and wouldn’t at all have minded the latter—Stone
discovered what all addicts had had to learn through the course of mankind’s long addictive relationship with drugs. That
what feels good when you first take it feels like the tortures of hell itself when you try to get off it. Stone was just a
junkie with a monkey as big as a mountain gorilla climbing on his back, screaming out for more.

Stone couldn’t have gotten more than a couple of hours of tortured sleep before he was awakened by the Group Leader, who did
his usual screaming and stick-smacking number to get them all going. He felt like shit. Shit wasn’t the word. He would have
been happy to feel like shit. The gorilla on his back wasn’t giving up. If anything, it was growing, its ugly paws ripping
at his brain. Stone wanted some of the Golden Nectar. He could feel it inside. He craved it. His body was demanding, begging,
pleading, cajoling him for it. But Stone just gritted his teeth and let the sweat pour down his face.

Fuck it. The pain was good. It hurt—but it cleared his mind. It razored through the curtain of fog that he had been in for
the last week or more. It sliced through the cottony brain cells, screaming out reality to him. And Stone savored it. Let
it rip into him. He would use the withdrawal to bring himself out of the drug stupor, would turn the pain into anger, and
would direct it against the bastards who had done all this to him, to April, and to the damn dog. And to all the poor pods
here, and those who had already died. Even as Stone made his face look blank, which was the hardest thing of all considering
the amount of torment his mind and flesh were in, he rose from the bed, dressed, and joined the others, who were filing silently
out, their eyes straight ahead, focused on infinity.

Stone managed to do the same thing at the morning Aura Ceremony—having slipped his Nectar down his sleeve. Though it smelled
wonderful and his cells cried out for him to drink it—just a drop or two—Stone poured the fucking stuff down his robe, getting
it all even stickier and fouler inside. But even that was just another irritant that he could use to drag himself from the
shell of nothingness he had been nearly digested into. At the drug factory he walked in stiff-legged, mounted his platform,
and began stirring. No one noticed a thing. No foremen or guards at the door noticed that beneath the blank expression, the
eyes staring straight ahead, Stone was in fact seething. There was pain in those eyes, and rage in those lips, threatening
to scream out at any moment.

But he didn’t scream—he just walked and stirred. And when he felt the fumes from the drug start getting to him, Stone ripped
off a few small pieces of material from the sleeve of his robe while he kept stirring, and put them in each nostril so he
to some extent was able to keep the mind-altering fumes out. As he stirred throughout the afternoon, Stone saw them pouring
vat after vat into large barrels and then stacking them at the far end of the factory. Already there were over a hundred of
the barrels—and Stone knew they were heading out of there soon. Once the bastards started getting their slimy fingers onto
the rest of Colorado, it would be all over.

Through the long painful day, Stone tried desperately to think up a plan—any plan. Hard enough under the best of circumstances,
considering how outnumbered he was. But even harder in his present mental and physical state. Sweat poured down from every
pore in his epidermis, and he was thankful for the long enclosing brown robe that hid his shaking from view. His suffering
was his own. It was a private affair.

The Guru came in again late that evening just before the end of Stone’s shift and he looked over the rising piles of barrels
all filled to overflow with the Nectar. He seemed pleased with it all—and in a positively good mood for a Guru who most of
the time emulated Adolf Hitler for all his demonstrativeness. The fat face smiled and his voice had an almost happy quality
to it. At last his dark plans were coming to fruition. After a lifetime of crime and thievery, he was coming into his own.
Would take his place alongside the great rulers of history. Only,
his
rule would last—unlike all the others’, the Napoleons, the Caesars, the Hitlers and Mussolinis—for many, many years. They
were mere bureaucrats compared to him. For he had a magic helper that none of them did—the Golden Nectar.

“The wagons will be here first thing in the morning,” Guru Yasgar told the foremen, patting the barrels as if they were the
thighs of his harem. “No problems.”

“No problems, Great One,” all the men cried out, throwing themselves into scraping bows before him as he left the place with
a growl emerging from his whipping robe. Stone knew he had to act—tonight. After tomorrow it would be too late. That didn’t
give him a hell of a lot of time to get it together. And considering the fact that he appeared to be entering the main stage
of his withdrawal process as he started puking his guts out into the Nectar, it looked even worse. Stone managed to guide
the upchuck slop right into the drug stew and stirred it quickly in. No one noticed. Stone figured people who ate human burgers
wouldn’t mind a little puke in their drug malteds.

By the time he was sent off from his shift, he was a wreck and could hardly twitch and lurch his way out the door. The guards
gave him the once-over, but lots of the stirrers could be seen going into similar physical contortions. The fumes were powerful.
The turnover rate at the drug factory was extremely high. And those who left didn’t usually get promoted upstairs—they croaked.
It wasn’t the kind of career those looking for a long-term situation would be happy in. But then, Stone wasn’t planning on
sticking around. He was getting out of this wretched place alive—or dead.

He staggered back to his bunk; most of the pods were already asleep. Group Leader whacked at him, driving him down the middle
aisle into bed.

“To sleep, Pod number 47, to sleep! You must awaken at five o’clock. Nectar production has been stepped up.”

“Great,” Stone mumbled as he climbed up into his top bunk and fell down onto the hard bed.

“What was that, Pod number 47?” Group Leader asked him, leaning back and looking a little more closely at the man. Pods didn’t
usually answer back with smartass cracks.

“I said…thanks for telling me now,” Stone said, talking in a slow monotone the way they all did. “It is an honor to produce
more Golden Nectar for the Guru—for such a worthless being like myself to be of such service. I will sleep well tonight. Of
that I am sure.”

“Excellent attitude, Pod number 47,” the Group Leader said with a grim smile. “I will note that on your performance chart.
Perhaps someday you shall rise to gray robe.”

“I am not worthy, Group Leader.” Stone sighed deeply.

“No, you are not,“ the pod crew chief replied as he walked away toward his single up by the door to keep his eye on everything.

“Asshole,” Stone couldn’t help but mutter under his breath, which was better than jumping up and slugging the guy. But thank
God the Group Leader didn’t hear him. He lay there, letting the tension and the pain ooze from his body. Only problem was,
it didn’t ooze away as much as just keep bubbling up until he felt as if he was going to explode. The worst thing about the
withdrawal, aside from the fact that he kept having to run to the shithole in the back of the place and let out with huge
streams of diarrhea, was that it made his brain feel as if it was splitting into about a thou-sand pieces. But with ever-deeper
descent into the torments of the drug-addicted flesh, Stone felt his mind growing clearer—and angrier.

He lay there and thought and thought. And when he had put it all off as long as he possibly could, gauging that it was about
three in the morning and that he didn’t have a hell of a lot of time, he at last sat up and said a silent prayer to whatever
gods might be, and crossed himself unconsciously to ward off all the supernatural powers of the Guru. For though Stone was
coming back to his old mind, he still feared Guru Yasgar, and the Transformer with that dead face, the glowing red eyes. How
could the man even be human? There was more to this whole stinking ball game than he could yet understand. But then, he wasn’t
here to unravel the fucking mysteries of the universe—just to grab April and the flea-bitten dog—and get the hell out of there.
Only, he had to do something first.

He rose, tried to plant his feet firmly on the floor as everything was spinning around, almost making him puke again. Stone
walked slowly down the center aisle hoping he could even still fight. He wasn’t sure things worked quite like they once did.
But he was about to find out.

“Where the hell are you going, Pod number 47?” the Group Leader barked out as Stone came even with his bunk, where the man
was half dozing with one eye open, his long stick held in his arms over his chest.

“I’m going to go knock the Guru’s balls off,” Stone whispered in the half-darkness. He couldn’t help but let a smirk flash
across his face. It felt good—even within the pain. Made it all worthwhile, in a way, that little smile. The Group Leader
shot up from his bed like a cougar with a pinecone up its ass and came at Stone with the stick, ready to take his head off.
As the stick flew in toward his skull, Stone slipped under it and slammed his fist up into the Group Leader’s lower abdomen.
With his index finger arched forward at midjoint, the pointed fist slammed into the man’s guts and knocked all air out of
him like bellows closing. The stick flew from his hand, and Stone caught it in midair and then guided the bent-over man who
was making strange sounds below him around and out of the room—into a small utility closet off to the side where they could
have a little discussion about a few things. Stone pushed the man right into the five-by-five-foot closet and closed the door
behind him.

Just as the Group Leader starting rising up again, Stone let him have a knee to the face. Various cracking sounds resulted
and a gush of blood instantly covered the man’s features. Stone needed information—and fast. He was going to have to put the
fear of God into this son of a bitch to make him spill. Had to make the man more afraid of Martin Stone than of Guru Yasgar.
“Now you’re going to tell me a few things,” Stone said after he had waited a few seconds, enough time for the man’s brain
to at least be hearing things again. “And you’re going to tell me, because the way I figure it, you’re an upper-echelon Group
Leader and must be on smaller doses of the Nectar. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to run things as efficiently. That means
you can also feel more pain.”

Just as the man’s eyes looked up to see if there was some way he could attack, Stone slipped his hand down under the Group
Leader’s ear and, just at the top of the neck and pressing in his finger, gave a shiatsu push to the nerve. The man started
to scream, but Stone slammed his hand over the gasping mouth. He didn’t need any more visitors right now. The acupuncture,
meridian 12 point. His father had showed him it—one of many places on the body where one could inflict pain, paralyze, or
kill. And from the looks of the tortured face beneath him, Stone figured he was doing something right.

“Now—I won’t hurt you again if you answer my questions, okay?” The Group Leader shook his head fast a few times as Stone let
up on the pressure and took his hand from the man’s mouth. He kept the finger just touching the skin, ready to jam it in.

“Where are my weapons…my clothes?”

“I don’t—” the Group Leader began. But Stone slammed the index finger in like a spear and the man gasped as if the devil had
just pushed a pitchfork through his heart.

“Let’s tell the truth, okay, asshole?” Stone said, almost enjoying making the little bastard squirm after all they had put
him through.

“In—in building R—south side of town. All confiscated stuff is taken there.”

“And second,” Stone said with a deathly darkness in his face. “Where are the girl—the Guru’s new woman—and the dog. Where
are they?” The man looked as if he didn’t want to answer that one at all. But Stone pressed again, and he spat out the words
as though they were bullets.

“In the Royal Temple. The Guru has taken her as his Heavenly Wife—and they are to be wed in a few days.”

“Great,” Stone said, slamming the stick down hard on the side of the Group Leader’s skull. The man collapsed in a heap on
the floor. He’d be out long enough for Stone to get his thing done. And after that, it didn’t really matter. He’d be out of
there—or he’d be dead.

He made his way through the back alleys and streets until he reached the building the Group Leader had mentioned. Stone reconnoitered
the place, making two complete circumferences before heading in. It was big—warehouse-size. Only trouble was, there was only
one door that Stone could see—and it had a guard in front of it armed with an SMG. Stone wasn’t in the mood to start cat-burglaring
it up the side of the damn thing—coming down from the roof. No, this was all going to have to be out front, every bloody bit
of it.

He walked suddenly from out of the shadows and straight toward the guard, waving at him to completely confuse the bastard.
Stone came up fast on the man with one of the big artificial smiles that all the pods wore. “Group Leader just sent me to
tell you this—” Stone said as he slammed his elbow around right into the guard’s face. Once, twice, three times he cracked
the elbow around into the center of the head. When he stopped, the bloody tangle of broken bone and blood was not quite the
same man it had been a minute before. He pushed the guard backward and they both half tumbled through the door, the guard
falling backward, where he began writhing around silently as he stroked his bloody face as if it was a baby.

Stone, seeing that the asshole wasn’t any more trouble to him, grabbed the SMG and a bag of ammo the guy wore on his hip and
instantly felt a whole lot better. With a little firepower maybe he could actually wreak some havoc around the place. Suddenly
the odds seemed a lot less formidable than they had just seconds before. He made a quick visual scan of the place, swinging
a small oil lamp that had been sitting by the door. The numbers of rows of shelves that ran off in every direction made it
seem like an impossible task. But once Stone began walking around he saw that things were all logically broken up into categories—of
clothes, boots, weapons, whatever. It didn’t take all that long for him to find his stuff. He took off the filthy robe, coated
on the inside from stem to stem with the Golden Nectar, and slipped into his black turtleneck sweater, motor-cycle jacket,
jeans, and boots.